Airline Refuses To Let Man Get On Flight; Moments Later, Officials Tell Him To “Thank God”

By Alexander Smith - Updated March 13, 2019

A passenger was rushing through the airport to get to the gate. He was late but believed that if he could run fast enough, he’d make it in time. However, as he pulled his bag through the airport, rushing by people milling about, he got to the gate only to learn that he missed the flight. As fate would have it, the Ethiopian Airlines flight would later crash, killing all on board.

Missing the flight proved to be Antonis Mavropoulos’s luck. The plane, which was bound for Nairobi, Kenya crashed. Antonis would have been the 150th passenger aboard the plane if he had managed to get on it in time.

In response to the crash, Antonis, who hails from Greece, shared an update on Facebook titled “My lucky day.”

The plane crashed only minutes after takeoff. It was a Boeing 737.

Before Antonis knew that missing the flight was the luckiest thing that ever happened to him, he admitted that he was mad – that things were just not working out for him that morning.

“I was mad because nobody helped me to reach the gate on time,” he said.

Antonis included a photo of his ticket on the social media post. He works as the president of the International Solid Waste Association, which is a non-profit organization intent on helping the world better manage waste. He was on his way to Nairobi for the UN Environment Program, the Athens News Agency reported.

After missing the flight by only two minutes, Antonis, who was very frustrated by this point, worked with airline staff to book another flight later in the day.

However, as he was about to board that flight, he was taken away to a secure location.

“They led me to the police station of the airport. The officer told me not to protest but to pray to God because I was the only passenger that didn’t board the ET 302 flight that was lost,” he wrote in his post.

Airport security wanted to question him because he was the only passenger who did not board the plane which was doomed. They did not know if he had some insider knowledge that it was going to crash or was involved in some way.

“They said they couldn’t let me go before cross-checking my identity. The reason I hadn’t boarded the plane, etc.”

People aboard the doomed plane held passports from 30 different countries. Some of those killed included workers for the UN.

Ethiopian Airlines is owned by the government and took possession of the Boeing 737-800 MAX plane back on November 15. This type of plane was the same one that crashed after takeoff in Jakarta, killing all 189 people onboard.

Another man named Alfred also missed the doomed flight. He gave up his ticket to the Ethiopian Airlines flight after Kenya Airways gave him a last-minute discounted ticket. But he decided to stay the extra day and get the cheaper flight, saving his life.